


Narcissus into Orpheus into—

by hikachu



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 17:16:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5013205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikachu/pseuds/hikachu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As his universe crumbled, piece by piece, he wondered why he was always reaching out for things that weren't meant for him and things he could never grasp.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Narcissus into Orpheus into—

**Author's Note:**

  * For [diopan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diopan/gifts).



> Happy anniversary!

  

In the hallway, encased by the heavy rococo frame, the painting stood out on the wall like an open window on a mysterious dream: a pitch-black cave and, at its core, a boy admiring his own reflection that seemed to tear apart the darkness with the glow of his skin, of his youth and his dreams. But, in the weak sunlight that filtered through the third floor's windows at noon, even the thick darkness of the painting shone, revealing the weave and consistency of the canvas, the rough edges of each stroke, and, for a while, Shuu would get up from his chair to walk closer to the wall and then take a step back, crane his neck to the left and then to the right, so that the light would hit different places and show him new secrets.

At the time, though he was still only a child, he knew already – someone told him, watching over him as he watched pictures upon pictures of western paintings flash before his eyes on TV or, perhaps, it was one of the large art books with the glossy pages – that it was characteristic of oil paints, that shine. Shuu thought it was so beautiful, they should get an artist, the best of the best, fly them over from Europe, to paint a family portrait: him and papan and Matsumae and, if they could get a canvas big enough (of course they could, there was nothing his family could not do or afford), all the servants he grew up with. Shuu thought, he should tell papan now that he remembered, before he forgot again and days, weeks went by until the idea resurfaced once more.

The hallway was silent, as were its washed up, gray shadows. Not a sound came from the inside of papan's studio. He must be still in the middle of work. Shuu knew he could walk in and his father would pick him up with a smile (he never got mad at him, he never was upset or in a bad mood; no one ever was, in the mansion), but, today, he had promised himself that he would wait, so that they could have lunch and talk together uninterrupted by work or any other obligation for as long as they liked. That's what adults called being re-spon-si-ble (he had learned the word only last week, so his tongue still tripped over the syllables—but only at times!) and a growing boy of Shuu's standing ought to learn how to be (he mouthed the word a couple times) responsible as soon as possible. And so, he folded his hands on his lap and stopped kicking his feet back and forth, because this was a serious matter and, to kill time, he tried to focus instead on the thought of the portrait, debating which room they should use as backdrop or if it should be done in the garden—if the roses were in bloom by then, they could sit in the gazebo, it would be a waste not to, and then, yes, they should get new clothes for everyone; they should have the kitchen staff prepare the most delicious coffee and treats and share them together and only discuss pleasant things, so that the painter from Europe could capture their best, brightest smiles, and if, in the future, someone happened to get sad, they could glance at the portrait, and be reminded of the happiness from that day, and feel better at once.

Shuu's optimism was absolute. It was, itself, the foundation of his absolute confidence. After all, he was the scion of an old, wealthy ghoul family: he was above all humans and most ghouls by birthright, and his dreams and certainties were not meant to shatter against the cliffs of reality, everyday struggles or that phenomenon that comes with growing older, and is generally referred to as, loss of innocence. He was free to do, to wish and to become anything he wanted; the only plan his father had ever envisioned for him was that his existence should be one wonderful, neverending dream—which Shuu accepted also as his natural right.

A dove flew by, too close to the window: its wings fluttered and hit the glass, which was thin and trembled like it was going to break. The noise startled Shuu so much that he jumped to his feet without thinking; the chair fell and its back banged against the floor. He raised his head and saw the bird's shadow floundering on the wall like a fish out of water. As it struggled to find its balance in the air again, it flew over the painting: the shadow fell on the face of the boy that emerged, alone, amidst the thick darkness, like it wanted to peck at his eyes. For a moment, it scared Shuu. That the boy, calm and focused as he was, absorbed in his own thoughts, was actually so vulnerable. That the dove, whose very nature allowed to fly as it pleased, would make a noise like that, a desperate sound like it could already feel death grasping it, in the sky, in its own element. For a moment, Shuu felt like his knees would give out if he tried to move. He felt unsure, as he never had before, as if everything he'd learned and believed in up until then had suddenly lost shape and meaning, as if he'd forgotten every word, every character and the reason people communicate with each other at all. For a moment, it was as if his very identity – all the things that had defined the contours and nuances of the existence called 'Tsukiyama Shuu' – had suddenly become an empty, useless thing. Was there anything at all that wasn't superfluous? He could not remember why he had felt that getting that portrait done was so important.

Only the boy in the painting seemed real. In the darkness that enveloped him, he thought he could see, now, the vague shape of obscure dreams that Shuu saw once and forgot, but also the outline of nightmares and fantasies that he was yet to see: something like time was meaningless as well; it didn't belong in that pitch-black night where everything existed and nothing could be told apart. Shuu's eyes fell on the boy's reflection and he saw that its features had grown deformed at some point: he couldn't tell whose face it was, in the dark water, anymore, and this, too, scared him. It could have been a classmate, the human whose liver he devoured yesterday, one of the servants or his father, or even himself. He felt then, with an inexplicable certainty, that all living things have been seeing the same dreams, always, in the past, and that they still would, eternally, in the future. That the painting was a prediction. That it was his future, encased in the rococo frame. But it was just a moment: that consciousness, that dread, that insight, that daydream. They were all part of a moment's spell. A delusion. The door to the studio opened with a sharp creak. The dove had finally flown away. He could barely remember the source of his uneasiness.

“Shuu-kun? I heard a noise.” Mirumo was looking at him with a worried frown. He didn't like that expression on his father's kind face.

Shuu ran up to his father, pressing his face against one of his thighs.

“What's wrong? Did you see something scary again?”

Shuu shook his head and glanced, out of the corner of his eye, at the painting.

The following day, the reproduction of Caravaggio's _Narcissus_ had disappeared from the hallway and Shuu's mind. On the walls, only the gray shadows remained.

 

He would recall the painting only several years later.

His head was hurting, then. His temple kept bumping against a hard surface repeatedly, as if in a cadence. It was painful, and Shuu wanted it to stop, but, his limbs and his mind were lead, and the actions he should perform kept escaping him. It was as if his body weren't his anymore, but he was only vaguely aware of it; he couldn't feel that it mattered too much, not at that moment. Instead, burned on the back of his eyelids and clear as day, was the image of young Narcissus with his brocade doublet.

Even now, in the absolute darkness that came with unconsciousness, his white skin seemed to glow like the sun. Dazzling. Blinding. He was as beautiful and terrible as he had been on that day. He was, also, as oblivious to anything as he had been then. Shuu wanted to ask him, how are you still there? He thought, he wanted to destroy him. Leave him there, to rot in that pond. Something like that isn't even worth consuming. Let the nymphs mourn him later, he deserves no mercy.

He remembered, then, Hori Chie's annoyed face, colored a pale bluish hue by her laptop's screen. Ah, she had been working, and took extra care to remind him as usual. “Don't you see that I'm busy? Even if I tell you to let me be, you're always buzzing around me like a fly, Tsukiyama-kun,” she'd gone back to squinting at the screen, typed something and tapped away at the touch pad, before looking back at him. This time, her eyes seemed somewhat guarded, larger, as if some profound kind of realization had just dawned on her. “For all your popularity, you're a pretty lonely person, aren't you?”

Were she a different person, Shuu thought, he should probably wonder if he wasn't being pitied back then, but the truth was simply that Hori Chie was gifted with the ability to look at things with utter, objective clarity—that was why they had become friends in the first place, wasn't it. Friends. A friend. She was a friend: he could see that clearly, now, too. He could see, beyond his reflection in the pond, all the other people – ghouls, humans – that he could have, should have called friends as well.

There were so many hands, that he should have accepted, held, treasured and never let go of, but that time was over forever now, and, immersed in nostalgic daydreams, Shuu felt like crying.

 

He wore his face—that's all there was to it, and he ought to keep that in mind.

It was the face he had hungered, longed for, dreamed, risked his life and made a fool out of himself for. It was the face that first made him look up from the pond and realize that the world was much, much larger than he thought—that there were many people, in it. It was the face for the sake of which he had let everything fall into ruin. Sent everyone who ever loved him to their death.

It was finally there, before him, close enough that, if he wanted, he could walk – only a few steps – and touch it with his own fingers and it would not disappear and he would not wake up—and it was, now, nothing more than a mask. It was the crystallization of the afterimage he had stubbornly chased after he let go of his own. A ghost made flesh, worn by a stranger. Was that person really still there, hidden somewhere in those eyes that looked at him with such an unfamiliar expression? Had he really believed that he could bring them back so easily? As his universe crumbled, piece by piece, he wondered why he was always reaching out for things that weren't meant for him and things he could never grasp— idealized abstractions that he built for himself, rejecting the reality around him. He thought, then, of Kamishiro Rize, of how she would have laughed at him now, and one of the afternoons they had spent together at Anteiku before he realized that she, too, was not meant for him.

“Truthfully, I don't have much interest in such old stories, so my opinion might be a bit biased,” Rize had said, with that deceptively shy smile that she used to wear so often, even with him. On the table between them, was a leather bound book from his family's collection. The golden characters engraved on the cover read: _Georgics_. “But, if Orpheus truly did force Eurydice to turn around because he missed looking at her face, I would say that his so-called love was no more than a self-centered obsession—oh, but, perhaps, that's what all forms of love are. I wouldn't really know. I much prefer the interpretation that he willingly gave up on Eurydice: maybe, Orpheus realized that letting a ghost dominate his life was no good, and wished to move on. We should all live for our own sake, first and foremost, don't you agree?”

He couldn't remember, exactly, what his reply had been then but, he was sure, it was different from the one he would give now: his world had been much, much smaller then, just like Rize's—No. It wasn't that his world had been small, rather, it was him who had been blind. He had always chosen not see anything but himself, and now—now that his eyes were finally wide open, all he could see was that, at some point, the world had turned into a terrible joke. It was all wrong. But his life was still not just his own, not anymore, and so he repeated to himself: he's wearing his face—that's all there is to it, and I ought to keep that in mind.

“ _Mister_ Sasaki, I don't know anything about you.”

Shuu kicked him with all his strength. He hoped it hurt.

 _Goodbye, Eurydice_.


End file.
